The waiting game...

I don’t have my research permits yet (and have no idea when that will finally happen as I am working through bureaucracies in 2 countries), so I can’t start my project, but while I am waiting, I decided it might be wise to make a preliminary site visit down to Lindi and Mtwara Regions, where I’ll be doing the interviews for my research project. It was convenient that a colleague on the social science team was passing through Dar on his way to Mtwara and could serve as my chaperone… the flight to Mtwara is just under an hour, which, while considerably more expensive than bus or ferry, is well worth it for the sheer difference in comfort and reduction in risk of bodily harm. After several harrowing incidents that almost kept us from making it onto the flight, including a late driver, horrendous traffic, my travel companion being a standby passenger, and pouring rain on the tarmac, we made it onto the plane.

To picture the airport where we landed at Mtwara, imagine the smallest airport in the smallest town you can think of (the closest approximation I can think of is the airport you fly into when traveling to Hanover, NH, but even that was years ago). The baggage claim is a wooden ledge, and immigration and customs is a 3-foot wide booth with a hand-painted sign and an older man who stands behind a folding table checking passports. Even for a domestic flight. This nice gentleman only checks wazungu passports (how’s that for racial profiling?), recording their details in a carefully lined notebook. I managed to escape the check, probably 1) because I was traveling with a Tanzanian and lacked the tourist gloss, and 2) because of the stricken expression on my face, having just realized my bag hadn’t arrived in the “baggage claim” (i.e., it wasn’t on the cart), and was still on the plane, Mozambique-bound with most of my earthly Tanzanian possessions. Thankfully the plane was headed back to Mtwara later that afternoon, so after filing a lost bag report (written in marker on a napkin), waiting in town a few hours and snacking on some delicious pilau, we picked up the bag and headed out to the field.

We slept in a town north of Mtwara called Lindi for the first three days because the nearby village the team was working in, Chikonji, was too small even to have a guesthouse. This posed a bit of a challenge to my colleague, who was to stay on in Chikonji for a week — sans Land Cruiser — to do ethnographic interviews. I liked to joke with him that he should look into sleeping in the goat house, which are small raised houses on stilts – kind of like hen houses – raised off the ground to keep the goats out of reach of prowling hyenas at night. Toting along his own mattress and bottled water, my colleague managed one better than sleeping with the goats: he finagled a room for himself in a local house with a very sweet family, and the local kids were excited about the new visitor (and the chance to see themselves on a digital camera screen).



Lindi, where we spent a few nights, is a medium-sized town built right on the Indian Ocean. As you can see below, the view from our guesthouse was incredible (though I have declined to feature the guesthouse because, well, suffice it to say it won’t ever be featured in any guidebooks).



In the afternoons after we returned from the village, we would go work on the beach where there was a local café serving cold beer and soda. Pickings were slim for meals: the first evening we went to the kituo cha basi (bus station), or the “standi.” The sheer amount of oil one consumes in a single meal at the standi -- mine was mishikaki (basically shish kebabs), chipsi (fries), and mayai (a very oily tomato and onion omelet) -- is mind-boggling. Suffice it to say the next few evenings I had bananas and tea for dinner.



Little did I know that Thanksgiving would be the last day of good eats -- roasted corn on the side of the road, peanuts, deep-fried chicken (no batter), and more chipsi -- before the dry spell that befell me once I arrived in Mtwara for the weekend. There were no restaurants open near my hostel over the weekend, leaving me to survive on beef jerky, mangoes, Skittles, Pepsi, and a whole lot of cashews... mmm!